The invention relates to methods of measuring consumer reaction to participation in a consumer activity.
Consumer reaction to a marketing stimulus (e.g., a television commercial) is typically assessed by means of exposing members of a focus group to the marketing stimulus (e.g., having the focus group watch the commercial) and obtaining the reactions and comments of the members immediately after exposure to the marketing stimulus by means of a written questionnaire and/or a personal interview. While generally effective, such a technique suffers from several drawbacks, including a tendency for members of a focus group to express inaccurately or imprecisely their reaction to the marketing stimulus.
The study of consumer reaction is generally restricted to exposing members of a focus group to predetermined marketing stimuli (i.e., forced selection) in order to ensure that the feed-back from the member corresponds to the defined marketing stimuli. It has long been recognized that the data obtained from such forced selection testing does not accurately reflect consumer experience as the member is not allowed to selectively interact with the marketing stimuli.
Hence, a longstanding need exists for a more reliable, scientific technique and methodology for measuring consumer reaction to participation in a consumer activity.
The invention is directed to a method of assessing consumer reaction to participation in a consumer activity, involving the steps of (a) allowing a sample population of at least two members to participate in a consumer activity for a period of time, (b) measuring surface electromyography signals from a zygomatic muscle of each member of the sample population during the participation period, (c) optionally measuring surface electromyography signals from a corrugator facial muscle of each member of the sample population during the participation period and combining the measured surface electromyography signals from the zygomatic and corrugator facial muscle of each member of the sample population to produce combined electromyography signals, (d) measuring electrodermography signals, selected from at least one of galvanic skin response signals, skin conductance level signals and skin resistance level signals, of each member of the sample population during the participation period, (e) recording data including at least a description of a stimulus experienced by each member during the participation period and a description of the interaction between the member and the stimulus, (f) synchronizing the recorded data with the measurements of electromyography signals and electrodermography signals for each member so as to allow association of the recorded data with measurements of electromyography signals and electrodermography signals, (g) equating or translating the electromyography signals to an appeal value for each member, (h) equating or translating the electrodermography signals to an impact value for each member, and (j) visually representing at least one of the appeal and impact values identified with the synchronously recorded stimulus.
By visually representing the appeal and impact values together for a given consumer activity for a given member (hereinafter xe2x80x9cmember set of appeal and impact valuesxe2x80x9d) on a single illustration, the overall relative marketing value of the stimuli involved in the consumer activity (i.e., extent to which consumers were impacted and whether such impact was favorable or unfavorable) can be understood. When desired, the group appeal and impact values can be determined with the group appeal and group impact values visually represented on a single illustration.
The method preferably involves repeating steps (a) through (h) for several different consumer activities with members of the sample group, and then visually comparing sets of appeal and the impact values for each of the consumer activities and/or specific stimuli with which the members interacted so as to allow a relative comparison of the consumer activities and/or the specific stimuli.